Having been in the food blogging world for many years, we at Snackable are constantly experimenting on how to get the maximum number of views and engagement per post and the most out of your social media profile.

Since the beginning of 2018, we ‘ve seen food bloggers shift from Facebook to Pinterest as their primary social platform after Facebook’s algorithm changes.

Seeing this change, we wanted to experience first hand the struggles of growing a Pinterest accountfrom nothing. With trial and error and constant monitoring, we managed to grow our monthly views from 0 to 3.5M in less than 2 months by using recipe video pins.

We’ve summed up our growth hacks for Pinterest accountsbelow. These tips are specifically for promoting food blogs on Pinterestand have helped us significantly increase website traffic through Pinterest.

Treat Pinterest as a search engine (like Google)

Pinterest is not a social network. Potential followers will not browse your profile; they’ll find you and your pins with the help of appropriate search terms (see point below for samples of appropriate search terms).

Also, you should be aware of the constant updates and changes to the algorithm, like Pinterest’s latest Rule of 5.

Optimize your profile

As with any search engine, a profile tailored to attracting the right people is incredibly important. You must create relevant descriptions for all your (multiple) boards and pins, using rich keyword descriptions for each of them.

For boards, instead of naming your board “my meals board”, do some keyword research and change it to “easy and fast prep meals board”. For pins, instead of creating a pin description saying “yesterday’s breakfast”, conduct keyword research and write things that people would type to find your pin, like “tasty breakfast on the go, delicious fruit smoothie, raw diet breakfast”.

Use keyword suggestion tools to help you write a description for your boards and pins that are relevant to your audience.: our favorites are Uber Suggest and Keyword Tool.

Optimize Pin Size

Vertical images and videos (the optimum ratio is 2:3 or 600×900 px) perform better since pins are organized in columns.You should adjust your photos and videos to this ratio and pin to your boards.

Upload new content regularly

Fresh, original content gets high ranking. Make sure you are showing new content to your followers daily. If you don’t have enough new content of your own, repin other content that would be valuable to your audience

Don’t have time to go on Pinterest daily? Schedule it. Pinterest recently declaredthat they see no difference between manually uploading or scheduling their pins using a partner tool. There are many scheduling tools for you to choose from: we use Tailwind.

Join group boards and Tribes

Joining group boards and tribes are a great way to share your own content and finding high-performance content for your boards.

Find groupboards and tribes that are in the same niche as your blog and ask to join. Mention how you will add value to the group. Once in the group, add value. 🙂 Share your best and most popular pins.

If you are having trouble to find a tribe to join, we have one! Join us here.

Discover new trends ahead of time – like video pins!

Be in the know of hot new trends – like video pins! We’ve discovered that they receive higher views and engagement, and outperform regular pins by 200%. Video pins can easily get to 15K visualizations in one week. Since videos are a relatively new trend on Pinterest, the platform is not flooded with videos (yet) and so yours will stand out.

Use Pinterest analytics

Use Pinterest’s rich analytics to analyze Pinterest performance – it can help you determine the best type of content that your followers like to engage. It will also show you your monthly views and monthly engaged so you can set your growth goals.

We followed these tips to optimize our Pinterest account and saw an increase in followers from zero to 3.5M in less than 2 months. With Facebook’s unpredictability these days, we think Pinterest is an excellent way to increase followers and traffic to your blog, especially if you are doing recipe videos.